


The Things You Do Not Know

by yeoltidecarol



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-07 16:17:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16857271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeoltidecarol/pseuds/yeoltidecarol
Summary: There are things you've been meaning to say to Chanyeol, things you categorize in silence. Little do you know Chanyeol has been doing the same.





	The Things You Do Not Know

You didn’t think it would be easy, wanting someone with the whole of your heart, the whole of your existence, but he made it simple.

The first thing you noticed about him was his ears, how the sight of them made you forget you were someone quiet, someone who did not crave the companionship of people. Odd, really, for a pair of ears to do this, but their size and their shape catch your eye, even when you do not think you are looking, and you find it hard to believe they miss the sound of your breath catching, halting.

Looking at him when he does not think you are looking makes your soul start to ache, pierces a hole in your heart that tears and tears and tears until you cannot imagine yourself anywhere but next to him. Looking at him when he does not think you are looking makes your hands shake, the pages of your book fluttering with the excitement of your fingers, like you are nothing but a breeze moving through space to stroke his skin.

Looking at him when he does not think you are looking makes you into someone who is quiet, and someone who, for the first time in their life, is lonely and looking for a love you never had.

 **What you do not know:** looking at you is magical, arresting, bewildering. Looking at you, when you do not know he is there, let’s him see you as a truth and not a mask. When you do not see him, you are not trying to be polite, you are not forcing a smile or making yourself small to share your space with him. When you do not see him, you are alone but never lonely, and the way you hold yourself - perfect posture, lips in a pout as you read, hair falling loosely around your face - is a gift you give to the world, but is delivered only to him.

Bodies pass you by, people, teenagers, living things that somehow do not notice you are there. It is a library, a building rife with distractions, and he cannot imagine you are his and no one else’s. Whispers surround him, distraction taking shape even from where he sits, but he does not want to speak. Not yet, not when the smell of cedar and stone refracts off your skin like the lens of a glass, making him nostalgic for an hour he has never had with you.

\---

It’s his ears that make you notice him, make you want him, but it’s his mouth that makes you fall in love.

Watching the way he speaks makes you count the things you know on your fingers, makes you stabilize yourself as he gives words shape and meaning so you can keep the will to focus.

Watching the way he speaks makes you count the things you know, and this is what you can discern:

1\. Love is a flood, or so you think. From what you know of longing and what you know of craving, it is a deluge in the center of the lungs. Humanity sputters beneath the pressure, saying things they were never ready to, never wanted to, say but what is there to lose when one feels as though their life is ending? You were always good at math, numbers, a quiet language that only reveals itself to the worthy - much unlike love, much unlike wanting. But this, the flood of it, is absolute. The data tells you so.

2\. There are seven sins, seven things you know are taboo amongst the living. They sit behind your eyelids and you organize them into a sentence based on urgency: You are proud the man you lust after makes you a greedy, gluttonous creature, but you cannot control the wrath that consumes you when you thinks about the inherent laziness of your tongue, your natural care with words, and envy other people for the certainty of their emotions.

3\. Colours are synonymous with emotion. Blue is sad, yellow is joy, green is calm, purple is patient. When Chanyeol speaks, you think you feel red. Red is frustrated and bloody, and you are both one and not the other. You are frustrated at the warmth of your blood. You have always thought of yourself as a cold thing, a synthetic thing; you are synthetic gel and you understand that red was never yours to feel, but you want it. Oh, how desperately you want it.

 **What you do not know:** talking with you is painful, feels like a torture for Chanyeol. It isn’t that he hates it, it’s that he loves it too much - is starting to love you too much.

Talking to you is painful, it hurts deliciously, and so he counts the things he knows to distract himself from how deeply, how fully he longs for you.

1\. The sirens outside your kitchen window mean unprecedented loss. The book you are holding makes him think of Greece and of Cyprus - Ovid, he thinks you’re reading. He sees the faces of dead - seafaring men and widowed women. He catalogues tragedy and its colloquialisms. There’s something in the word, a yearning he can’t quite taste. He holds the weight in his hands and watches it slip away, between the spaces of his clenched fists, because he is guilty for feeling so whole, with you, when someone else has suffered.

2\. You told him your birthday - it’s approaching soon, and you do not mind that most people you know will not remember or think to greet you. There shall be no candles on your cake, if you have a cake at all. This, he fully understands. Fire, now that he knows you, is hopeful, a thing that would melt him down to little more than a wick; he thinks of the words ‘hope is a thing with feathers,’ and nicknames you Icarus.

3\. When you speak to him, you look away, down and far off as though you are already distant. What this tells him is that you are finding it easy to turn from him, finding it easy to pull away. The problem is that all his energy is being devoted to you, forcing his busy, distracted brain to realize that he will never get enough of you. There will only ever be one of you, in this life and the next, and even if he spends a lifetime living without you, he will never have enough of you. He will never have enough of you, but you are already learning to forget him.

\--- 

It’s the way he speaks that makes you fall in love, but it’s the way he kisses you that makes you…. _the way he kisses you._

Harboring this much feeling in your chest is dangerous - you’ve been telling yourself this for weeks. It’s dangerous even when the sentiment is returned, and when it isn’t, it’s lethal. Perhaps this is why, every time you see him, you have taken to withering. Chanyeol is standing in your room, speaking, but you do not hear him because you are withering, bones brittle and aching and turning into ash. If he would touch you, maybe you could think yourself a phoenix. If he would hold you, maybe the carving of his name on your bones would hurt less - done with love by his hand rather than force of woe by yours.

It’s raining outside, raining hard and angry, and you think there is a poetry within the drops - something about love, something about redemption, something about how passion doesn’t need rays of sun to be sincere. You’re glad that it’s raining, you think. When he leaves, you can cool your burning skin.

Chanyeol’s eyes are wide, frenzied with something wondrous and glorious and - oh. It’s you. You’re listening now, taking in all of him instead of just your favourite pieces and you catch the last words that fall from his beautiful, sweet mouth.

_‘I love you.’_

It’s a rush of words, all mangled together in his low vibrato, but you catch the feeling. Oh, do you catch the feeling.

When he kisses you, it’s the most alive you’ve ever been. This, you think, is waking up, This, you think, is living.

This, you know, is loving.

 **What you do not know:** when Chanyeol says he loves you, he thinks he’s never spoken in his life until this very moment.

When Chanyeol says he loves you, he thinks it’s the only time he’s ever understood the science of logic.

When Chanyeol says he loves you, he doesn’t mean now, he doesn’t mean until tomorrow.

When Chanyeol says he loves you, he means always, and he does not care if you don’t believe him.

He thinks he has plenty of time to show you.


End file.
